Wednesday 2nd May 2018
I had booked myself a 6:45am flight from Auckland to Portvila, Vanuatu, so I stayed the night at the airport hotel where I enjoyed a really long leisurely shower, a soft comfortable bed and “The Great British Bake Off “ on TV.
Following a 3:30am wake up call, and with the usual New Zealand efficiency, my flight was on time. I was flying with Air New Zealand, which was lovely, even in economy I had plenty of room as I had managed to get myself a first class seat for the first flight, and an exit row seat by the window for the second flight.
I arrived in Portvila on time at 2:30, but it took another 90 minutes to get through, customs and immigration. At 4pm following some serious haggling over the cab fare, I took a cab down to the town where I had arranged to meet Bob, the arrangements had been a bit sketchy to say the least! “Go to the bar on the front, you can’t miss it!”

As we drove towards the seafront I quickly spotted True Blue out in the bay, and told the cab driver to let me out, I easily found the bar on the front, ordered a sparkling water (yes I said water, not wine) and sat down to wait, I waited, and waited, and waited… There was no sign of Bob, the bar’s internet wasn’t working so I was unable to send him a message to say where I was, but I knew that eventually someone would be going back to True Blue and I could jump up and down wave palm leaves around or something, and eventually attract their attention.
The time dragged on and I knew Bob would be worried but I didn’t want to go wandering around as that would make it even more difficult to find me, so I made the decision to stay put. After and hour and a half I ordered a glass of wine, it’s not often that I don’t finish a glass of wine, but this horrible, pretense of being an Australian Sav was more than I could bear. I was about to put my head in my hands and cry, I was lost, alone and worse still, drinking horrible wine, could things really be this bad? Suddenly out of the blue, there was Bob, like an angel from above, I was saved, he had hired a cab driver “George” to drive him all over the town searching for me, it was George who spotted me in the bar because of my bags, and low and behold I was found…